My Home Brewed Kinetic Splitter

Here's the spring that kicks the ram upward after the ram runs off the gear.
Lotsa holes drilled to lesson the shock on the rack and gear teeth when the splitter is kicked into action.
The layer of white under the sled is some super-slippery stuff I got from McMaster-Carr. I forget what it's called.



Here's a dark picture of the ram & gear--in normal resting position the teeth don't mesh due to the spring.



Pillow blocks and 1" diameter shaft. Should I have made it 1-1/8th? Time will tell.



Here's the handle to force the ram down onto the rotating gear.



The belt is a shock-resistant belt from Mcm-Carr.
You can see the flywheels better here.



Ready to split.



I gave it one whack.



Finished it off with my axe.

 

If there are no knots, the pieces fly off the end almost all the time.
Sometimes I mess up setting the log against the blade.
Sometimes the log is lopsided, and rolls a little bit, which screws up the splitting process.
I've ordered two more pillow blocks and a shaft, and I'm going to use some gears I have to put a jack-shaft on this so I can run the engine at the rpm it is supposed to run at, but not speed up the rotating gear.

 

So if you get into a tough one and the splitter ram fails to make it full stroke, does it simply force the rack and pinion teeth to "un-mesh"? (which I assume means the engagement lever is forced back up too?)

 

Not exactly. The engagement lever is not tied to the ram. On the opposite end of the engagement lever from the handle is a roller, and in use, the roller rolls along the top of the ram, exerting downward pressure only when I pull up on the handle. At the end of a full stroke, the end of the ram goes beyond the rotating gear, the front sled hits a pair of stops, and the other end is free to pop up because I'm not holding it down with the handle/roller. When the ram stalls, it's hard to describe... and since I've only just started using this, and since my attention is focused forward, on the log, blade and ram... But, lets say I've just set a log against the blade, and I grab the handle and am ready to pull upward and start a split. OK, I jerk the lever upward HARD, and that shoots the ram forward and I hold the lever up until the ram makes contact with the log, at which time I (think) I let it go. I'll have to do some more splits and see exactly what happens. Maybe it doesn't kick itself out of gear... maybe I kick it out of gear. But something happens, and the flywheel rotation doesn't stop, tho if the ram stalls, the flywheel rotation does slow a small amount, but not dramatically. It's hard to know what exactly is happening, since I'm focused on the log and the pusher end of the ram. A video would tell the tale.

 

Now that I'm thinking about it, when the ram stalls, it does kick up on its own

 

I never converted one over, I know the points seemed to run better and start easier.

 

I've heard that before with other older engines...

 

Thanks guys. I'll keep the points.

 

What pulls the ram back into position?

Any videos yet?